۱۳۸۷ آذر ۲, شنبه

اسطوره هاي سكايي در داستانهاي رستم

Scythian Genealogical Legend in «Rustamiada»1

By: Igor V. Pyankov*

Translated into English by T.I.Pyankova

Scythian genealogical legend is told in different versions in classic texts completely and also by separate extracts (the most detailed analysis of all these texts could be found in the works of A.Christensen2, G.Dumézil3, A.M.Khazanov4, and D.S.Raevsky5).

Talking about different plots of ancient Iranian and ancient Indian epic traditions parallel to this legend, specialists don't concentrate too much on the legend about Rustam, who is the main subject of the Sistan cycle legends. And Rustam is Saka by birth ("Sagzî" of epos), he is Central Asiatic Scythian. In the legend about Rustam there must be more close connection to Scythian epos. According to Curtius Rufus (VII, 8,17,18) Scythian genealogical legend was also known by Central Asiatic Scythians. Legends about Rustam together with Sistan cycle were told in detail in «Shahname» by Firdausi. So, further, talking about the legends of Rustam we will mainly apply to the work «Shahname» to find parallels to Scythian genealogical legend.6 And intermediate stage between Scythian genealogical legend and legends about Rustam of the latest Iranian epos is Sogdian version of legends about Rustam and of what we will talk further on. And these legends were very popular with the Sogdians, as we know this from Sogdian literature and from the fine arts, where is the most expressive thing - the Penjikent murals.

Herodotus told one of the most complete versions of Scythian genealogical legend in his story about "Scythian Heracles" (IV, 8-10). And Herodotus' story is expanded by information of other ancient authors. So, Herodotus tells: Once Heracles, driving his bulls in front of him, came to the deserted country at the Pontus' shore (the Black Sea), country which later was inhabited by the Scythians. The snow-storm was raging, it became cold, Heracles wrapped himself in lion-skin and went to sleep leaving his horses in the pasture. Getting up, he found out that by some miracle his horses disappeared and he left the place for searching them. In the cave, which was in the forest, he met a wonderful creature-maiden: the lower part of her body had the form of snake. This maiden-echidna introduced herself as the master of the deserted country and promised to give him his horses back on condition that Heracles should have intimate relations with her. Heracles agreed to do a deal with her and the maiden did her best to keep him by herself as long as possible. Only later when she understood that she would have three sons from Heracles, she let him go, gave him back horses and got from the future father gifts which were meant for the most worthy son. And this worthy son was turned out to be Scythes, descendants of whom inhabited that country which had been deserted before.

Herodotus called this legend Hellenic, but actually it is the local Scythian legend which has only Hellenic editing . Scientists have been interested in this legend for a long time, and they are sure that it is one of the versions of the Scythian genealogical legend, legend which explains the origin of the Scythians. In this legend we see the Scythian hero, known by the Greeks as Heracles, and the ancestors of the Scythians, according to this legend, were the Scythian hero and the mythical creature. That mythical creature was the outcome of the Earth and the Water, who was known as the daughter of the main river of that people, whose origin we know from the legend.

Can we find in the most ancient layers of «Rustamiada» similar plots? Yes, we can. And we'll try to show it. Also we should take into account that the initial genealogical meaning of this myth was forgotten not only in Firdausi times, but during the times of its origin too. Certainly, Rustam could not appear in the epos as the ancestor of the Sakas, and also the Sakas themselves were forgotten too, and in that time the myth was just taken as a fairy-tale. The myth was adapted according to the new world outlook and adjusted for the common plot of the poem. But in spite of all, it is really surprising that in Firdausi's poem some parts of the ancient myth were carefully preserved, and this fact gives us opportunity vividly see the myth in «Rustamiada». In «Rustamiada» we can find two plots which preserved the echos of the Scythian (or Sakian) genealogical legend.

In one of the plots we can notice a primitive naturalness and archaism of the myth in its original appearance. This is a story about Rustam's battle against dragon. In Firdausi's poem this story was included into the legend about "seven camps" of Rustam, or about his seven feats which he performed on the way to Mazandaran (Vol.I. Lines 11597-12356). Poet tells us: Rustam is riding his faithful horse Rahsh and sees in front of him the herd of onagers, he is hunting the herd, catches one of the onagers, makes a feast and then goes to sleep in the thicket (Vol.I. Lines 11599-11620). In this story we see onagers instead of bulls, but actually the beginning of the story is quite suitable to continue this narration about the main adventure of the hero in the spirit of Herodotus. But Firdausi interrupted his narration to include into it two additional episodes. First episode: the victory over the ferocious lion (Vol.I. Lines 11621-11650) (and it becomes clear why the Scythian hero has lion-skin). Second episode: the discovery of the spring; near Rustam, who was feeling thirsty in the burning desert, appeared a miraculous roe-deer who leads him to the invigorating moisture of brook (Vol.I. Lines 11651-11728). Here it is used an alternative version of myth about the ancestor: the magic fallow-deer with golden antlers leads the ancestor to the river, to the place of his people future living. The fact, that this plot was included into the series of stories about Scythian Heracles, means that the Scythians knew this plot. According to one of the versions, told not by Herodotus but by other authors (Pindar, Ol. III, 30-33), Heracles, hunting Kerinean fallow-deer, visited Scythia as well. And in general, according to the sources by the classical authors, the legend about magic golden antlers fallow-deer was widely spread in the genealogical legends of different Scythian peoples. Taking into account the late transformation of the myth, it becomes clear also why the country, in which Rustam appeared, wasn't only the lonely place, but the real sandy desert, where the main character suffered not because of the frost, but because of intense heat and lack of water.

Having described these two episodes, Firdausi as if comes back to the former plot. Rustam, after he had had enough onager's meat, covered himself with the animal's skins and fell into sleep at the brook. But at night a terrible dragon appeared three times in front of his horse Rahsh, dragon who lived in the nearest growth. Two times the dragon disappeared, worrying the horse, but for the third time dragon had to fight with Rustam. During the battle the dragon declared himself as the master of the whole desert (Vol.I. Lines 11729-11832). So, we see that the main moments of the stealing Heracles' horses by maiden-echidna were preserved in this story: the dragon tried to attack only Rahsh but then disappeared. Also such detail as lion-skin, in which Heracles wrapped, falling into sleep, was also preserved. Though in the poem it is told about "skin-shell (of big feline beast of prey)" (babr-e beyan), the previous episode with lion vividly shows us, that the raiment, the main character had, was made from the lion-skin. We can notice the original nature of dragon in connection him with growth and brook, even if there are no direct indications that it was half snake half woman. Also there is no any love-theme in this legend. But right after the description about Rustam's battle against dragon, Firdausi tells us about some sorceress who tried to seduce Rustam. The place of adventure was again near the brook in the shade of the trees where there was a dastarhan full of different viands (Vol.I. Lines 11833-11892). And again if we remember maiden-echidna, she tried to keep by herself Heracles as long as she could showing him her hospitality.

Fortunately, we can compare Firdausi's story about the meeting between Rustam and the dragon with more early version of the same story which was shown with the help of murals in the ancient Penjikent. On that frescoes we can see Rustam's battle against the dragon. A lot of details, which have direct correspondence to the text of «Shahname», can be found in the frescoes: dragon with its serpentine body entangles horse's legs, the rider takes his sword, strikes dragon by it, the dragon is defeated and his blood floods everything around.7 And here it is shown just the battle of the main character against dragon, but the genealogical meaning of myth was forgotten, the same as in Firdousi's poem. However, there is an important detail in the frescoes: the upper part of dragon's body has woman look, the same as in Herodotus' story, where it is a maiden-echidna, and attacking the horse dragon tries to embrace the rider. So, we can notice that according to the murals' version the love theme existed together with the battle against dragon, unlike Firdousi's version.

In the second of those two plots, had been mentioned before, the initial myth was completely rationalized and given as a nice love-story, answering the most exquisite literary tastes in the days of Firdausi. But the main plot line of this story, actually, remains the same as it was in the first case. It is a story about Rustam and Tahmīnah, which is the component part of the famous legend about Suhrāb. And here we again see Rustam hunting onagers on the plain but this time on the way to Turan. Again Rustam caught an onager, made a feast and fell asleep in the growth near the water, meanwhile his horse Rahsh was pasturing on the grassland. And here Rustam's skin-shell was again mentioned. But this time the horse was stolen by the Turans, according to the common rationalization of the plot. So, Rustam set off for searching his horse Rahsh. Horse's traces led Rustam to Semengan. That was a real city, well-known in the Middle Ages, situated in the valley of the river Hulm to the south from Amu Darya. The king of Semengan with his suite met Rustam. Rustam, threatening king, demanded to return his disappearing horse, but king treated him respectfully, called him the sovereign and gave a feast in his honour. During the night king's daughter Tahmīnah came to Rustam, she was consumed with passion to him, promised him to return his horse and declared her wish to have son from him. Rustam married Tahmīnah and gave her an amulet for the future offspring after what he went away with his horse Rahsh. (Vol.II. Lines 37-266).

As we see the plot here, in main, is the same as in the Scythian legend.8 But there are no supernatural elements and fairy-tale in this story. In the image of beautiful Tahmīnah there is nothing what could remind us about the primitive dragon, and in general, situation itself and all details are rather realistic. Though in the plot there appeared a new character - Tahmīna's father, the king of Semengan, and for this character we can find the correspondence in the series of legend about Scythian Heracles. According to one of the versions of the Scythian legend, not used by Herodotus, Heracles, after he had come to Skythia and defeated Araxes, had intimate relations with his daughter Echidna (Inscriptiones Graecae, XIV, N°1293A, 94-97).9 Here Araxes is the divinity and personification of the river, which in some versions of the Scythian legend was shown as the river of the homeland of the Scythians. We should note that the story about Rustam and Tahmīnah, unlike the story about Rustam's battle with dragon, preserved the original genealogical meaning of the myth: Suhrab was born by Tahmīnah, and he was the son of Rustam. And it is interesting fact, that in Firdausi's story some details, limited by that genealogical meaning, were preserved, though the content of myth was changed. In the Scythian genealogical legend the progenitress had three sons and for each of them there was a gift given by their progenitor. The gifts themselves were described in different versions in different way, but the common factor is that all of them were made from gold. And in Firdausi's story Tahmīnah had only one son - Suhrāb, but Rustam sent him as a gift three sacks full of gold (Vol.II. Lines 297-304).

Scythian genealogical legend shows us a number of other correspondences in the stories of Sistan epic cycle. So, according to the legend, the progenitor of the Scythians gave birth to three sons, who in some versions of the legend are considered to be founders of three peoples, and in other versions of the legend those sons are considered to be the ancestors of three estates, or three "castes". Each caste had its own colour: priest - white colour, military - red colour. It is known other version of the legend, also not shown in Herodotus' story but just makes an addition to this story, so the version where the founder of the priest caste is characterized as an elderly man with white hair from birth; and to the founder of military caste the emblem, having the form of three lights and resembling the shafts of lightning, was attributed (Valerius Flaccus, VI, 48-68).10 As we can notice, the story about Rustam and Tahmīnah has a hint that initially there was a talk about three Rustam's sons. Though this theme about three sons and successors of the progenitor became obsolete in Sistan cycle, it remained very significant traces. One of these traces - strange, at first sight, name of Rustam's father Zāl-i Zar ( «White-Haired Old Man») and the legend about him, being white from birth. Another trace - the name of Rustam's son Suhrāb (or Surkhāb, «Having the Red Glitter»).11

Though the image of Rustam in «Shahname» by Firdausi drew in itself features of some historical personalities - representatives of Sakastanian ruling family of the Surenas, - but the basis of the image goes from the remote Scythian (Sakian) history and mythology. Rustam's image appeared there as the progenitor of the Scythians (of the Sakas). He had took up with the river-divinity after what he had his descendants and also the river-divinity let his horses pasture on grasslands of this river. And it is important to note that the remote Scythians' ancestors, cattle-breeders and horse-breeders, who settled in vast territories of Eurasian steppes and created such a myth, were close to the reality, because the waters of the steppe rivers and thick grasslands really gave them, their descendants and their herds the possibility to live.

So, the Scythian genealogical myth is just a version of the same generally Iranian and even generally Indo-Iranian myth. Its various samples we can find in « Shahname» (legend about Faridun and his sons), in «Avesta», and in «Rigveda». Traces of the Scythian genealogical legend are still preserved in folklore of that area, where in former times the Scythian peoples lived. In the territory of the Southern Tadjikistan in 1965 I heard the stories from local inhabitants about some dangerous maiden-echidna who lived in the river. Those stories vividly reminded me of Herodotus' story about the Scythian Heracles.

Bibliography

Belenitsky A.M. (1967). Drevniy Penjikent - rannefeodalny gorod Sredney Azii. Leningrad, 1967.

Belenitsky A.M., Stavisky B.Ya. (1959). Novoe o drevnem Penjikente. // Arkheologi rasskazyvayut. Stalinabad, 1959. S. 38-66.

Christensen A. (1918). Le premier homme et le premier roi dans l'histoire légendaire des Iraniens. 1. Uppsala, 1918.

Dumézil G. (1941). Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus. Paris, 1941.

Grantovsky E.A. (1960). Indo-iranskie kasty u skifov. Moscow, 1960.

Justi F. (1895). Iranisches Namensbuch. Marburg, 1895.

Khazanov A.M. (1975). Sotsialnaya istoriya skifov. Moscow, 1975.

Pyankov I.V. (1985). Skifskaya genealogicheskaya legenda v "Rostemiade". // Tvorcheskoye naslediye narodov Sredney Azii v pamiatnikach iskusstva, arkhitektury i arkheologii. Tashkent, 1985. S. 103-105.

Pyankov I.V. (1992). Rustam - geroy "Knigi tsarey": skazka ili byl? // Pamir. 7-8. Dushanbe, 1992.

Raevsky D.S. (1977). Ocherki ideologii skifo-sakskich plemion. Moscow, 1977.

Tolstov S.P. (1948). Drevniy Khorezm. Moscow, 1948.

Tolstoy I.I. (1966). Statyi o folklore. Moscow - Leningrad, 1966.

Notes

*Doctor of History. Universal History Professor. Yaroslav the Wise State University of Novgorod the Great, Department of History

1 I've already applied to this theme in my works in Russian language: Pyankov (1985), S.103-105; Pyankov (1992), S.145.

2 Christensen (1918), P.136-139.

3 Dumézil (1941), P.49-57, 220-225.

4 Khazanov (1975), S.36-54.

5 Raevsky (1977), S.19-86.

6 The quotations from this work are taken from the publication: Firdousi. Shahname. Vol. I,II. Moscow, 1957, 1960.

7 Interpretation these murals as is there are scenes from the legend about Rustam was proposed by A.M.Belenitsky: Belenitsky, Stavisky (1959), S. 62-66; Belenitsky (1967), S. 23.

8 This similarity had been already marked: Tolstov (1948), S. 294, 295; Raevsky (1977), S. 33.

9 The interpretation of this text is in: Tolstoy (1966), S. 234,235.

10 All these moments of the Scythian genealogical legend are convincingly analysed by E.A.Grantovsky: Grantovsky (1960), S. 5,6.

11 The etymology of these names is in: Justi (1895), S. 313, 378.

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۱۳۸۷ آبان ۳۰, پنجشنبه

محاكات چيست

mimesis (2)

The whole history of the interpretation of the arts of letters has moved and been transformed within the diverse logical possibilities opened up by the concept of mimesis. —Jacques Derrida1
Mimesis is one of the oldest and most central terms in literary, art and media theory. The term mimesis (Greek: __ from __) is often translated in English as “imitation” or “representation.” The word has been used to describe the relation between an original object and a representation that attempts to imitate that original. The first known use of the term was in Plato's Republic, where Socrates asserts that all art is mimesis. Books 2, 3 and 10 all deal with that concept. In the dialog that Plato presents in the 10th book,2 Socrates compares the artistic reproduction to the reflection of an object in a mirror or in water.3 That is to say that the notion of mimesis implies similarity between reality and its representation. However, the mimetic principle does not apply solely to art, for in the Platonic scheme of things, the world of sensory reality is in turn an imitation of the realm of Ideas. Thus the artistic image is but a shadowy simulacrum of an already degenerate world, an imitation of a model of the Form. Since art imitates appearances rather than essences, it is two steps removed from the Truth, the realm of pure Ideas and Forms. Thus, Plato concludes that art does not approximate the eternal, but rather arouses the passions and emotions of men. Therefore, he bans all artists from the ideal Republic. In his Poetics, Aristotle follows Plato in defining all art as mimesis. His list of imitative arts includes such disparate forms as poetry, painting, theater, dance, music, sculpture, as well as epic and other kinds of narrative. Aristotle then distinguishes between the various creative arts according to three differentials: their media, objects, and mode or manner of representation.4 Unlike Plato, Aristotle only applies the notion of mimesis to the arts, and treats artistic creation as a distinct and beneficial activity. He ascribes the origin of art to a natural, universal human desire to produce imitations, and to derive pleasure from these imitations.5 Having rejected the Platonic notion of pure Ideas, Aristotle does not denounce art for depicting the sensory realm, creating "the most accurate possible images of objects."6 Furthermore, he does not limit mimesis to the artistic reproduction of tangible things, for tragedy and epic imitate actions and experiences, whereas comedy mimics particular persons. Yet both genres are concerned with the possible rather than the actual. Keeping with this notion, Aristotle argues that "the function of the poet is not to say what has happened, but to say the kind of thing that would happen […] what is possible in accordance with probability or necessity."7 In this statement, Aristotle emphasizes that mimetic art need not duplicate reality exactly, but rather must reproduce the plausible and the likely in the sphere of actions and experiences. Aristotle thus deems poetry philosophically superior to history. He asserts that history deals only with particulars, while poetry expresses universals, realized as behavior and speech consonant with general types of persons and their possible intentions. He formulates the notion that poetic mimesis appears credible and convincing by relying on plausibility and verisimilitude. The tension between Platonist and Aristotelian notions of mimesis continued in Western philosophical traditions starting with the neo-Platonists in the 16th century and continued throughout the Renaissance, the 18th century, and arguably continued to structure modern media and social theory in the 20th century. The term took on “different guises in different historical contexts, masquerading under a variety of related terms and translations: emulation, mimicry, dissimulation, doubling, theatricality, realism, identification, correspondence, depiction, verisimilitude, and resemblance.”8 In its modern incarnation the distinction between the represented and the representation was mirrored in the dichotomies between nature and culture, world and word.9 Such dichotomies have been the target of several post-structuralist thinkers. For instance, Gilles Deleuze reconsiders Plato's project as attempting to “distinguish essence from , the intelligible from the sensible, the Idea from the image, the original from the copy, the model from the simulacrum.”10The difference between the two is that “[the] copy is an image endowed with resemblance, the simulacrum is an image without resemblance,”11a difference that delineates the distinction between ethics and aesthetics, respectively. Deleuze moves away from these dichotomies by rejecting the doctrine of the copy as the true resemblance. He locates the essence of modernity in the overthrow of Platonism most clearly manifest in Pop Art, where there is no longer an original, but a creative chaos. Derrida makes a similar move towards the overthrowing of the doctrine of the copy but within the domain of textual mimesis. For him, every text defers and doubles another that has preceded it in an infinite intertextuality, or what one might call infinite chain of indexical reference. Another attempt at overcoming the dichotomy can be located in the Greco-Arab philosophical tradition, where the idea of mimesis took a different turn. There, the idea of mimesis was not only about the relation between the work of art and the world it imitates or represents, but also with the producers and receivers of that work of art as well as their relation to the world. There was also a shift in emphasis away from dramatic imitation towards oratorical evocation. This shift was a result of a difference in the nature of poetry as an art form between Greek and Arab contexts. Drama was the highest form of art for the Greeks. But for the Arabs, drama as an art of theatrical performance, was little known. Instead, performance in Arabic poetry is recitational. Thus Arab philosophers were more concerned with mimesis in language, which they closely associated with the term takhyil—an idea close to Aristotle's phantasia12—defined as the poetic ability to evoke images in the memory of an audience. Imagination and memory here are closely related, for the image evoked in mimesis is not simply a picture that is stored and recalled, but rather a complex whole that includes sensory, rational and emotional faculties; an image that is both particular and general, located in the past, but pointing to the future. Thus, Arabic commentaries on Aristotle's Poetics lay stress on 'imaginative representation' as a means of inculcating conviction in a subject, and the treatise is taken to give an account of the logic of poetry, showing how it must be understood and the purposes it can serve. Al-Farabi, one of the earliest commentators, distinguishes between two kinds of mimesis: actual, achieved by doing something; and verbal achieved by saying something. He further divides the each into two sub-classes. Actual mimesis can be either be achieved through the making of an object that represents an original—e.g. a statue of a person—or by a direct embodied imitation of the original—e.g. acting as someone in performance arts. Verbal mimesis, on the other hand, can either be direct imitation of the original object—e.g. onomatopoeia, or words that evoke the same feeling they describe—or an indirect imitation by evoking the presence of the original in a third.13 In sum, for al-Farabi, there are four kinds of mimesis: immediate actual, mediated actual, immediate verbal, mediated verbal. As mentioned above, for al-Farabi, mimesis is an imaginative act, not a mere representation of the world, nor of any ideals that constitute it. Rather, it is an act of re-construal and re-construction of the world as the poet lives and perceives it that evokes similar images in the hearer's mind. The stress here is on conviction, rather than truth or falsehood—i.e. the relation between word and world—for successful mimetic evocations can be either true or false.14 The means of mimesis in poetry, al-Farabi adds, is the order of words according to a particular rhythmic succession of movement and stasis. Avicenna (Ibn sina) starts from takhyil and makes it primary both to mimesis and the metricalization of verse. He asserts that mimesis and metricalization are only means the end of which is takhyil. He defines poetry as evocative speech, or “that to which the self submits in liking or aversion, without reflection, thought or choice, and regardless if what is said is true or false.”15 Nonetheless, he rejects the purely magical as non-evocative. In that sense, he is in agreement with Aristotle that poetry is concerned with the possible, rather than the actual, or the impossible. Fables, are not poetry even if they were written in verse since they are concerned with stating opinions rather than evoking memories. Further, he contrasts logical proof to takhyil noting that logical proof does not move the soul as takhyil does, and that people are more inclined to the latter than the former. Avicenna seems to agree with Plato that mimesis is not directed towards truth, but he does not reject it as the latter does. Rather he makes it central to morality and pedagogy since the purpose of mimesis is the evocation of likings or aversions towards objects, not the verification of abstract truth. Contrary to al-Farabi and Avicenna, Averroes (Ibn Rushd) took poetics to be a universal category that transcends cultural differences. He looks at poetics to discover the “universal canons which are common to all or most nations.”16 Averros does not escape the influence of Ibn Sina by means of this different emphasis, however, though he has his own concerns. He seeks to clarify the rational nature of poetics, but he is more interested in defending the validity of logic and reason than in merely understanding the cognitive efficacy of poetry. Thus, he takes fables to be non-poetic because they are not concerned with the actual or the possible—that is to say, truth.

Yazan Doughan
The University of Chicago :: Theories of Media :: Keywords Glossary :: mimesis (2)
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محتکات1

mimesis Nature creates similarities. One need only think of mimicry. The highest capacity for producing similarities, however, is man’s. His gift of seeing resemblances is nothing other than a rudiment of the powerful compulsion in former times to become and behave like something else. Perhaps there is none of his higher functions in which his mimetic faculty does not play a decisive role. --- Walter Benjamin, "On the Mimetic Faculty" 1933

The term mimesis is derived from the Greek mimesis, meaning to imitate [1]. The OED defines mimesis as "a figure of speech, whereby the words or actions of another are imitated" and "the deliberate imitation of the behavior of one group of people by another as a factor in social change" [2]. Mimicry is defined as "the action, practice, or art of mimicking or closely imitating ... the manner, gesture, speech, or mode of actions and persons, or the superficial characteristics of a thing" [3]. Both terms are generally used to denote the imitation or representation of nature, especially in aesthetics (primarily literary and artistic media). Within Western traditions of aesthetic thought, the concepts of imitation and mimesis have been central to attempts to theorize the essence of artistic expression, the characteristics that distinguish works of art from other phenomena, and the myriad of ways in which we experience and respond to works of art. In most cases, mimesis is defined as having two primary meanings - that of imitation (more specifically, the imitation of nature as object, phenomena, or process) and that of artistic representation. Mimesis is an extremely broad and theoretically elusive term that encompasses a range of possibilities for how the self-sufficient and symbolically generated world created by people can relate to any given "real", fundamental, exemplary, or significant world [4] (see keywords essays on simulation/simulacra, (2), and reciprocity). Mimesis is integral to the relationship between art and nature, and to the relation governing works of art themselves. Michael Taussig describes the mimetic faculty as "the nature that culture uses to create second nature, the faculty to copy, imitate, make models, explore difference, yield into and become Other. The wonder of mimesis lies in the copy drawing on the character and power of the original, to the point whereby the representation may even assume that character and that power." [5] Pre-Platonic thought tends to emphasize the representational aspects of mimesis and its denotation of imitation, representation, portrayal, and/or the person who imitates or represents. Mimetic behavior was viewed as the representation of "something animate and concrete with characteristics that are similar to the characteristics to other phenomena" [6]. Plato believed that mimesis was manifested in 'particulars' which resemble or imitate the forms from which they are derived; thus, the mimetic world (the world of representation and the phenomenological world) is inherently inferior in that it consists of imitations which will always be subordinate or subsidiary to their original [7]. In addition to imitation, representation, and expression, mimetic activity produces appearances and illusions that affect the perception and behavior of people. In Republic , Plato views art as a mimetic imitation of an imitation (art mimes the phenomenological world which mimes an original, "real" world); artistic representation is highly suspect and corrupt in that it is thrice removed from its essence. Mimesis is positioned within the sphere of aesthetics, and the illusion produced by mimetic representation in art, literature, and music is viewed as alienating, inauthentic, deceptive, and inferior [8]. The relationship between art and imitation has always been a primary concern in examinations of the creative process, and in Aristotle's Poesis , the "natural" human inclination to imitate is described as "inherent in man from his earliest days; he differs from other animals in that he is the most imitative of all creatures, and he learns his earliest lessons by imitation. Also inborn in all of us is the instinct to enjoy works of imitation" [9]. Mimesis is conceived as something that is natural to man, and the arts and media are natural expressions of human faculties. In contradiction to Plato (whose skeptical and hostile perception of mimesis and representation as mediations that we must get beyond in order to experience or attain the "real"), Aristotle views mimesis and mediation as fundamental expressions of our human experience within the world - as means of learning about nature that, through the perceptual experience, allow us to get closer to the "real". [see reality/hyperreality, (2)] Works of art are encoded in such a way that humans are not duped into believing that they are "reality", but rather recognize features from their own experience of the world within the work of art that cause the representation to seem valid and acceptable. Mimesis not only functions to re-create existing objects or elements of nature, but also beautifies, improves upon, and universalizes them. Mimesis creates a fictional world of representation in which there is no capacity for a non-mediated relationship to reality [10]. Aristotle views mimesis as something that nature and humans have in common - that is not only embedded in the creative process, but also in the constitution of the human species. In 17th and early 18th century conceptions of aesthetics, mimesis is bound to the imitation of (empirical and idealized) nature. Aesthetic theory emphasized the relationship of mimesis to artistic expression and began to embrace interior, emotive, and subjective images and representations. In the writings of Lessing and Rousseau, there is a turn away from the Aristotelian conception of mimesis as bound to the imitation of nature, and a move towards an assertion of individual creativity in which the productive relationship of one mimetic world to another is renounced [11]. In 20th century approaches to mimesis, authors such as Walter Benjamin, Adorno, Girard, and Derrida have defined mimetic activity as it relates to social practice and interpersonal relations rather than as just a rational process of making and producing models that emphasize the body, emotions, the senses, and temporality [12]. The return to a conception of mimesis as a fundamental human property is most evident in the writings of Walter Benjamin [13] , who postulates that the mimetic faculty of humans is defined by representation and expression. The repression of the mimetic relation to the world, to the individual, and to others leads to a loss of "sensuous similarity" [14]. "In this way language may be seen as the highest level of mimetic behavior and the most complete archive of non-sensuous similarity: a medium into which the earlier powers of mimetic production and comprehension have passed without residue, to the point where they have liquidated those of magic." [15] Michael Taussig's discussion of mimesis in Mimesis and Alterity is centered around Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno's biologically determined model [16], in which mimesis is posited as an adaptive behavior (prior to language) that allows humans to make themselves similar to their surrounding environments through assimilation and play. Through physical and bodily acts of mimesis (i.e. the chameleon blending in with its environment, a child imitating a windmill, etc.), the distinction between the self and other becomes porous and flexible. Rather than dominating nature, mimesis as mimicry opens up a tactile experience of the world in which the Cartesian categories of subject and object are not firm, but rather malleable; paradoxically, difference is created by making oneself similar to something else by mimetic "imitation". Observing subjects thus assimilate themselves to the objective world rather than anthropomorphizing it in their own image [17]. Adorno's discussion of mimesis originates within a biological context in which mimicry (which mediates between the two states of life and death) is a zoological predecessor to mimesis. Animals are seen as genealogically perfecting mimicry (adaptation to their surroundings with the intent to deceive or delude their pursuer) as a means of survival. Survival, the attempt to guarantee life, is thus dependant upon the identification with something external and other, with "dead, lifeless material" [18]. Magic constitutes a "prehistorical" or anthropological mimetic model - in which the identification with an aggressor (i.e. the witch doctor's identification with the wild animal) results in an immunization - an elimination of danger and the possibility of annihilation [19]. Such a model of mimetic behavior is ambiguous in that "imitation might designate the production of a thinglike copy, but on the other hand, it might also refer to the activity of a subject which models itself according to a given prototype" [20]. The manner in which mimesis is viewed as a correlative behavior in which a subject actively engages in "making oneself similar to an Other" dissociates mimesis from its definition as merely imitation [21]. In Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment, mimesis (once a dominant practice) becomes a repressed presence in Western history in which one yields to nature (as opposed to the impulse of Enlightenment science which seeks to dominate nature) to the extent that the subject loses itself and sinks into the surrounding world. They argue that, in Western history, mimesis has been transformed by Enlightenment science from a dominant presence into a distorted, repressed, and hidden force. Artworks can "provide modernity with a possibility to revise or neutralize the domination of nature" [22]. Socialization and rationality suppress the "natural" behavior of man, and art provides a "refuge for mimetic behavior" [23]. Aesthetic mimesis assimilates social reality without the subordination of nature such that the subject disappears in the work of art and the artwork allows for a reconciliation with nature [24]. Derrida uses the concept of mimesis in relation to texts - which are non-disposable doubles that always stand in relation to what has preceded them. Texts are deemed "nondisposable" and "double" in that they always refer to something that has preceded them and are thus "never the origin, never inner, never outer, but always doubled" [25]. The mimetic text (which always begins as a double) lacks an original model and its inherent intertextuality demands deconstruction." Differénce is the principle of mimesis, a productive freedom, not the elimination of ambiguity; mimesis contributes to the profusion of images, words, thoughts, theories, and action, without itself becoming tangible" [26]. Mimesis thus resists theory and constructs a world of illusion, appearances, aesthetics, and images in which existing worlds are appropriated, changed, and re-interpreted. Images are a part of our material existence, but also mimetically bind our experience of reality to subjectivity and connote a "sensuous experience that is beyond reference to reality" [27]. Michelle Puetz Winter 2002
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